Welcoming a New Year means welcoming a new set of resolutions. Each year I strive to bring more efficiency and order into our daily routines. If I'm not intentional with our mornings, they can easily spin out of control into a chaotic, hurried rush to get our five children out the door to school.

Over the years, I have learned that preparation goes a long way in cutting the chaos. So, over the next three months I am going to share my time-tested tricks to minimize morning chaos. This post is about the is the weekend sack lunch shortcut:

• Make sandwiches on Saturday for the week following. Put the sandwiches in baggies, label contents with a permanent marker and store them in a bin in the freezer. On a school-day morning, the most time-consuming part of making a sack lunch has been eliminated.
  
• Children can help. By kindergarten, children can pack their lunchboxes for themselves if sandwich bins, water bottles, pretzel packs, applesauce and plastic spoons, and fruits are kept in easy-to-reach places.
• By second grade, assign the children the Saturday-sandwich-making task, and rejoice...your lunchbox packing days are over!
• Worried about the taste of a sandwich that has been frozen? Sandwiches such as turkey, ham and cheese, and peanut butter all freeze well. They will thaw to the perfect temperature by lunchtime. This also eliminates the need for an ice pack during hot months.

The only thing left to do is reset your alarm clock for that extra 15 minutes of sleep you'll be getting.